Women’s Rights – “Slip-Sliding Away”

Men are still determined to dominate women and some men pay an awful lot of attention to the things women do to stay healthy in body, mind, and spirit. Of course there are women who do this too, but whenever I have been to a Planned Parenthood rally, it has been men who are the most rabid protestors. Religions also try to control what women can do with their bodies in the name of keeping them from sin, I guess. Catholics and Evangelicals would not seem like natural allies, but when it comes to being against ending pregnancies, they are, and they have no interest in the circumstances. Things move so fast that we often get over things that seem shocking and adapt to them quite quickly. We are, also, so distracted by the constant requirements of our President, who must always be the center of attention, that we are letting the states take action on women’s rights that we will really regret; actions which will affect us all.

Now that our government is so often controlled by Republican men, women’s rights are up for grabs in the very places where laws that championed the rights of women were once upheld. It seems to be the fashion that if you don’t like a law, you get creative and find a work-around. Most of this action occurs in the states and perhaps we just feel good that this stuff did not happen in our state. It is really euphemistic to call these activities creative. They actually are ways to break a law. These laws get challenged and end up in court but our courts are being stuffed with Conservatives so sometimes discriminatory laws get upheld. You would think that we would never allow ourselves to become accustomed to legal dirty tricks designed to take away rights, but these are such issue-rich times that we lose our focus.

Specifically, I am talking about what so-called pro-life people have done to sidestep Roe v Wade because they can’t overturn it. As soon as this decision came down from our Supreme Court opposition began. Initially opposition was loud and sometimes violent. Opponents called women who chose to have legal abortions, baby killers, murderers, and tried to block women who needed to end a pregnancy (a personal, private right given to women by law). Emotions ran so high that eventually a doctor who performed abortions was shot and he died. Fear was used as a deterrent to seeking an end to a pregnancy, a sort of cultural terrorism against women already in crisis. Some women could afford to seek out a clinic that was not under attack but the poorest women could not. We don’t keep statistics on how many women were dissuaded from ending a pregnancy by activists but I suspect this has happened.

Recently the anti-abortion coalitions (formal or informal) have left terrorism behind and they have been thinking outside the box. They still label women as baby killers but have come up with some very effective strategies to close clinics that provide abortions. They have used TRAP laws, mainly in southern states. These laws set standards for women’s health clinics that the clinics cannot afford to meet. The laws decree that clinics affiliate with a nearby hospital when the law’s drafters already know that most hospitals will not allow this. Alternatively, the law requires the clinic to hire high level professionals and buy equipment too costly for their budgets, equipment also unnecessary for the procedures performed there. In West Texas so many clinics had to shut down that there was only one clinic left. I doubt that it is still operating.

As I have already stated, on these matters Catholics and Evangelicals find they are allies, and many of the most obdurate voices are male. These odd allies have been attacking women’s rights on the issue of contraception. Many believe that contraceptives are abortifacients and are therefore also being used to kill babies (perhaps before they are even conceived) (sarcasm). Pregnancy can be planned, but it is often pretty random. Men who don’t like to use protection may be the worst offenders. It only takes one sperm and one egg and a baby could result unless the process of cell division is stopped. Apparently preventing a sperm from fertilizing an egg is considered against God and nature. These folks want to take women back to either abstinence or the highly ineffective rhythm method. (Look it up if you don’t know what it is.) It is total myth that all women in any age practiced abstinence.

The newest pseudoscientific attack on the issue of abortion centers around the determination of “personhood”. When can a fetus feel pain or pleasure. When does a fetus become a “person”. Ohio and Iowa have recently set that mark at 6 weeks and have introduced bills known as “heartbeat” bills which contend that a fetus becomes a person when it has a heartbeat. Scientists say this happens at 6 weeks. Newer attempts are setting “personhood” at conception. Interesting that these people who are often right wingers dismiss science on climate and embrace science that puts women in their “rightful” place, “barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen”. The contention here is that as soon as a fertilized egg attaches to the uterine wall and meiosis begins – voila, personhood happens. Legislators are now asking, “is that tiny “person” entitled to all the rights granted to persons in our documents. Oh, Oh.

This could be bad, really bad. And that is already proving to be true, although on a very small scale so far. There have been several cases where women who claim to have had a miscarriage are being arrested and charged with murder.

All this happens under the radar in the Trump administration, more properly called “The Trump Show”. But we had better not ignore these mental shenanigans practiced by the anti-abortion faction because instead of overturning Roe v Wade these constant attacks on the law could render it moot. Women would once again lose control over their own health, their own bodies, and their own lives. Do we really want to kiss the 60’s goodbye? I still have a newsprint, stapled copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Perhaps one day it will be illegal to own it.